Perfume vase 1756 - 1766

Editor: So, here we have a porcelain perfume vase, made by the Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory sometime between 1756 and 1766. The Rococo style is just bursting forth with these ornate handles and flamboyant colours! What strikes me is how it attempts to capture nature. How do you interpret this object? Curator: It is indeed an explosion of form, isn't it? Look closely at those birds. Consider the European cultural obsession with the exotic, particularly birds. The vase then becomes not merely a decorative object, but a symbol. Editor: A symbol of what exactly? Curator: It reflects humanity's desire to control and capture the wild, doesn't it? Perfume itself is a manufactured scent attempting to capture or mimic nature, similarly contained, altered. What emotions are stirred in you by these "natural" images presented in such an artificial, luxurious form? Editor: That’s a fantastic point! It’s like taming nature but still admiring its beauty from a distance. A porcelain gilded cage, almost? Curator: Precisely! The very shape of the vase, the function it serves, these gilded latticework details… Aren't these visual cues inviting us to consider the complexities of human ambition and perception? The vase invites questions about how we value—and perhaps, inadvertently confine—the world around us. Editor: I never thought of it that way; it makes you question our relationship with nature in a very interesting way. Thanks for that, Curator! Curator: My pleasure! Thinking about art objects this way—how they mirror back our own assumptions and preoccupations—that's what makes them so powerful.